THE GREAT PLAINS - from north to south, more or less

a virtual fieldtrip - by Alan A. Lew

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Satellite infrared image of the US-Canada border, showing Montana, southwestern Saskatchewan and southeastern Alberta, Canada. This area is cattle grazing territory for the Canadian provinces, but is wheat growing land for the US side of the border (where cattle is grazed further south). The Milk River cuts across the image diagonally, and a small outlier of the Rockies stands out in red (vegetation) in this northernmost part of the Great Plains.

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A portion of the Badlands of South Dakota

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Oil pumping on the Great Plains north of Denver, Colorado

View of Denver (barely visible in the haze) on the Great Plains from the Front Range of the Rocky Mountains.

Satellite infrared image of the Denver area in Winter.

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Eastern Oklahoma is much more moist than the western Panhandle part of the state.

Signs along the freeway in Oklahoma mark the former American Indian reservations in the state.

Tulsa, Oklahoma sits near the banks of the Arkansas River.

Red dirt and blue skies in western Oklahoma.

This is the heart of Tornado Alley

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Crossing the Great Plains - somewhere in Oklahoma. Tucumcari is in New Mexico.

Texas State Line near the Oklahoma Panhandle

Somewhere in Central Texas.

The Alamo near what is now downtown San Antonio, Texas. Below and to the east of San Antonio one drops off the Great Plains and into the Lowland South (where Houston is located).

A portion of San Antonio's famous downtown River Walk.

F.M. = Farm to Market roads. You also see R.M., Ranch to Market, roads in rural Texas. We are somewhere between San Antonio and Houston here, in a much more humid area.

The Llano Estacado - with a wind generator in the background. This State of New Mexico historic marker is located close to the border between Texas and Oklahoma.

The Llano Estacado (Staked Plains in Spanish) is possibly the driest part of this region. The red dots in this infrared image are fed by the underground Ogallala Aquifer. The left third of this image is higher land -- the beginning of the Rocky Mountains and the Mountain West region.

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Country/Rural Wisdom

• Don't name a pig you plan to eat.
• Country fences need to be horse high, pig tight, and bull strong.
  
• Life is not about how fast you run, or how high you climb, but how well you bounce.
• Keep skunks and lawyers at a distance.
• Life is simpler when you plow around the stumps.
• A bumble bee is faster than a John Deere tractor.
• Trouble with a milk cow is she won't stay milked.
• Don't skinny dip with snapping turtles.
• Words that soak into your ears are whispered, not yelled.
• Meanness don't happen overnight.
• To know how country folks are doing, look at their barns, not their houses.
• Never lay an angry hand on a kid or an animal, it just ain't helpful.
• Teachers, Moms, and hoot owls sleep with one eye open.
• Forgive your enemies. It messes with their heads.
• Don't sell your mule to buy a plow.
• Two can live as cheap as one if one don't eat.
• Don't corner something meaner than you.
• You can catch more flies with honey than vinegar, assuming you want to catch flies.
• Man is the only critter who feels the need to label things as flowers or weeds.
  
• It don't take a very big person to carry a grudge.
  
• Don't go huntin' with a fellow named Chug-A-Lug.
• You can't unsay a cruel thing.
• Every path has some puddles.
• Don't wrestle with pigs: You'll get all muddy and the pigs will love it.
• The best sermons are lived, not preached.
• Most of the stuff people worry about never happens.

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